


Ignorance (I Guess I’ll Go)

by Fectless



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alchemy, Canon-Typical Violence, Fuinjutsu, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Second Person, Possession, Self Insert, Sporadic Updates, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27494569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fectless/pseuds/Fectless
Summary: Because having two souls is different from having DID; neither should ever be just a gag. Sharing a body against your will can be unpleasant business. And, as canon shows, it is not sustainable in the long term.Where did Inner disappear to, after the time skip?SI-OC as Inner Sakura.(Tags will be updated as the story continues.)(This reads like a horror summary, but it’s not scary— I swear.)
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Inner Sakura
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	Ignorance (I Guess I’ll Go)

You were hanging out with other nine year old girls today and the topic of conversation: the “most attractive” guy in military school. Not that you understood what it meant to be in military school at age nine, or how ridiculous it was to focus more on crushes and daydreams than stuff that would actually keep you alive when you graduated. You were nine-and-a-quarter years old, still young enough to think the few extra months really meant anything. Still young enough that you had no idea that when the teachers said you would learn to catch food when “camping” next month, they meant that you would have to kill a cute bunny rabbit or starve. You really had little idea what you were in for, no matter how clearly the (propaganda-heavy) textbooks spelled it out.

“I heard Sasuke-kun likes girls with long hair!”

‘ _Really?_ ’ Your face twitched into a shy, satisfied smile as you curl a strand of your pale pink locks around one finger. ‘ _I’m so glad that Mom and Dad convinced me to grow it out!’_

You ignore that familiar voice in the back of your mind that reminded you of your desperate pleas to your parents for a haircut just last week. And of how disappointed you’d been when they told you short hair wasn’t appropriate for a young lady. “ _And aren’t you planning on being a shinobi?_ ” Tsu-chan— no, the voice. You were too old for imaginary friends now. Your mother said that you were supposed to stop calling it by the name it chose until it got bored and went away. You were supposed to ignore it. “ _Short hair like Hinata’s is better until you’re strong._ ”

But you wanted to impress Sasuke. And most of the other girls had long hair, too! Your mother said it was lady-like to have long hair, which must mean that Sasuke liked long hair, like Fubuki is saying, because he’s so manly.

“‘ _Manly?_ ’” The voice seemed almost amused by your thoughts, the somehow dark mirth filling its voice as it asked, “ _So what? You’re gonna change who you are for a boy who’s never even spoken to you?_ ” asked the voice.

You fought to keep the scowl off of your face, not wanting the other girls to think you didn’t want to hear about your precious Sasuke. ‘ _Sasuke-kun is the best, so of course he needs a lady that can match him!_ ’ And you were off daydreaming about the kid with half an ear on your friends’ words. The voice in the back of your mind projected a sense of annoyance at this and you felt your toes twitch without having meant to move them. You flexed them, distracted from pining over your crush and the annoyance faded.

(You ignored the foreign curiosity that bubbled up in the back of your skull. This would’ve been the first sign, but alas, you didn’t notice.)

“I thought he liked skinny girls?” someone asked. “I even started a diet—“

“Apparently—“

“Sakura, is something wrong?” And there was Ino. Of all the kids that were in this child soldier school, she was the one that you picked to be close friends with. Or rather, Ino picked you. Even the voice agreed that Ino was pretty cool, too, if a bit loud. It was normally quiet and attentive when she came around.

Which meant it should stop nagging you now, thank goodness.

“Oh, hi, Ino! I was just thinking about class this morning. Wind Country is a lot scarier than I’d thought.” Inwardly, though not directed at the voice in particular, you thought _, ‘I heard Ino likes him too! No way am I gonna tell her, not when she’s already so pretty!’_

“ _She’s a friend, Sacchan._ ”

‘You’re right,’ you thought. ‘ _We need to let her know we’re on to her.’_

_“No. Sakura, no, she’s a friend. Our best friend. She probably does not like him like that. Be nice.”_

But you ignored the voice with all the stubbornness of your young heart, believing that you knew better. Your left arm twitched.

The bell rang while you steadfastly ignored the voice’s attempts to change your mind. You and the other students filtered back into the classroom, only for Iruka-sensei to announce that the after lunch lesson was on kunai throwing and take your class back outside. Because letting rambunctious, mean nine year olds hopped up on sugar handle knives made perfect sense.

“ _Look at how the teachers and clan kids are throwing them,_ ” the voice directed. “ _Wait, What’s going on over there with Uzumaki?_ ” Since it made sense, you copied Iruka-sensei, not understanding why the voice urged you to take a closer look at Naruto after everyone began. Mizuki-sensei was already paying too much attention to that loser, not that it seemed to be doing him any good. The blond boy kept missing his target by a wide margin. You sniffed and turned back before he could see you and start being annoying again. You threw the knife in your hand and it landed in the outermost ring.

Eventually, Iruka-sensei called, “Okay! Time to stop for today. Everyone take a moment to drink some water before your next class.” A slow, heavy anger arose from the back of your mind, growing stronger when he continued. “Girls head to Suzume-sensei for kunoichi lessons. Boys, we’re going to go run some laps, okay?”

You didn’t know why the voice resented this so much, though you wondered on it for a moment as some of the boys started grumbling about the heat. But you couldn’t figure it out. Inside the shade of the school building, having lined up for water, you belatedly realized that you’d been sweating heavily and took a moment to be deeply relieved that kunoichi lessons meant that you’d be somewhere where Sasuke-kun won’t see the sweat stains that had started forming on your shirt.

You and Ino got to the fountains at the same time. After you’d both had a few sips and started walking to class, Ino asked, “Hey, Sakura, why is it that sometimes...”

“Sometimes?” you prompted as you stepped through the classroom door. But even when you and Ino sat down, she didn’t continue, only shook her head with a pensive frown on her face.

“Alright, girls,” Suzume sensei said Before you could ask again. “Today, we’re working on a way to get information while undercover. Everyone is going to split into three groups and—“

During the lesson you think to ask the voice, ‘ _Hey, why were you so angry earlier?’_

_“The boys are running laps while the girls are stuck doing this.”_

A classmate comes up to you and tries to get you to spill the sentence Suzume-sensei told you to remember. You insist that it’s complicated while trying to imply that their memory couldn’t possibly hold it while remembering their own. She spills her secret in frustration and sensei tells her she’s out.

“I’d rather do this than run laps,” you murmured.

“ _Sure, but this is all InSab, and having only girls here is—“_

_‘“InSab?”’_

_“Infiltration and Sabotage.”_

“Oh.” Another classmate comes up to you. She flusters you but the voice pulls your attention away before she can trick you into spilling your information.

“ _Really, it’s fine if you’d rather do this but they didn’t ask. And it’s only girls here,” the voice seems to struggle for words while your classmate gives up and huffs off. “It’s mean of them. What if boys want to do InSab? And Suzume is—”_

_‘Suzume-sensei.’_

_“—teaching us how to pass messages, learn information, figure out how to feed ourselves when on missions and such. Are the boys even learning any of this? Are they gonna give away information on accident, or misunderstand messages passed to them or starve or poison themselves? And why are they the only ones working on stamina? What if running away is the difference between life and death for a kunoichi, but they’re too tired to keep going?”_

You’re shocked for a minute. You, in all your nine year old glory, had never considered any of this before. And if the voice is right, then... what else is it right about? The lesson ends like that. You tried to bring it up with Suzume-sensei as she graded everyone (and you had one of the higher scores in the class, behind Ino), but she dismissed the class without really listening.

Ino walked home with you part way, complaining about how the girls she had been grouped with- two of the other civilian-born students- had completely missed the point of today’s exercise. Your consternation held up for a while but both of you devolved into giggles after Ino did a bad, but supposedly accurate, impression of how her group had talked.

“See you tomorrow!” Ino called, splitting up with us and heading off towards her home as we went the other way to our own.

You put the voice’s words out of you mind, wondering if your parents were already home and what your mother was going to make for dinner.

* * *

The first time you realized the voice was more than just part of your imagination, you were four years old. It had been with you for longer than that as a small, kind but chiding thing; the quiet voice that often reminded you to say thank you, or to brush your teeth in the morning, or to eat the icky veggies that Mama insisted were good for you. But you didn’t realize that it wasn’t just you remembering these things on your own until you were four.

You had only recently learned of the existence of the military school which you would attend in the future. Your Papa had sat you down a few days ago to tell you how he and his parents had moved to Konoha when he was around your age, just before the start of the Second Shinobi War, and how people who moved to Konoha had to put their firstborns through shinobi training for three generations. Since you were old enough to have this explained to you- a whole two years before you would start attending, your parents decided you were also old enough to wander around the town on your own.

You! A child barely four years old, still prone to tripping over your feet when you went faster than a toddling walk. A child who still cried when startled by the sudden bark of a dog. A child who had never wandered on her own before and had yet to memorize her home address. Clearly, your parents were being careless with you!

You, of course, were thrilled as none of this occurred to you. And you were unaware of the other dangers as well.

Due to your father’s status— an immigrant who had been medically discharged from the military before fulfilling the entirety of his contract— and even your mother’s— bastard grandchild of some clan shinobi’s dalliance with a civilian woman (though your mother had managed to serve the full six years post-graduation from military school, unlike your father), you did not live in the best of neighborhoods. True, it wasn’t the worst neighborhood either, like the Flower District... but the Flower District wasn’t all that far away. You never paid much mind to the stories about vanished children, reasoning that your mother was only trying to scare you.

But she wasn’t, sadly. Children went missing all the time from this part of Konoha.

And you were a cute child with your father’s exotic coloring— eyes the green of new leaves and hair the color of the flower petals for which you were named— so the voice that reminded you to straighten up your shoes when you took them off warned you to be careful. If someone nabbed you, it said, your parents would likely never see you again.

You bid a cheerful goodbye to your parents that morning. (The puzzled look on their faces as you said you’d be careful, so they didn’t have to keep telling you to do so went unnoticed.) That morning, you were quite excited. The familiar sight of the city wall in the distance. The odd soldier in their navy or black uniforms, most of them wearing a green vest, inspired curiosity now that you knew you would be joining them in the future. You watched as they leapt across the rooftops, trying to follow from the streets. But they were quite fast and you tired out much too quickly to keep up. Then you decided to explore.

Only a few minutes into your wanderings, you came across other children. There were perhaps a dozen of them, all near your age, in a dinky little playground. The game they played involved jumping in puddles and then chasing someone around. It looked fun to you.

“Hello!” you chirped. Four of them slowed down to respond in kind and a fifth invited you to join them.

Before you could ask how to play, a sixth child said, “No way!” With a solid half of their number distracted, the others paused too, some of them looking irritated.

Pouting, you demanded, “Why not?”

“Because one team would be bigger! And that’s not fair!” the boy explained. Some of the others nodded along and your pout deepened. Even the one who’d invited you couldn’t refute that logic.

“But—” Your eyes cast about, looking for some to say you could play anyway, but no one did. You, however, saw another child who was sitting out— a small blond with whisker-marks on his face, watching enviously from the swings. Then you committed what was apparently a grave sin. “What if he plays too?” you asked, pointing at the boy. The blond startled, hope blooming across his face when the others stilled. You smiled back at him, and he brightened further.

You were proud of your logic. Indeed, it was sound logic by all accounts save for one thing: the other children hated him. You had no way of knowing, though after the fact you told yourself that you should have known from how ill-kempt he was and the way he was sitting off by himself with no one paying attention to him. But that was after, and at present you didn’t know. So you were unprepared for the purple-haired girl who had invited you to push you into the muddy gravel.

“Yuck!” she sneered as you fell badly and scraped up your hands and knees. “Demon lover! Go away!”

Tears welled up in your eyes. They began to laugh at you. When you looked towards the boy on the swings, you saw that he was stubbornly looking away. The tears spilled over and you heaved as sob as you lurched back up to your feet.

“Crybaby!” someone yelled, but by then you had started blindly running away.

When you slowed to a stop, lost and angry and scared, covered in snot and mud and tears— it was then that we had our first proper conversation.


End file.
